


Esurire et Sitire Discet

by Gileonnen



Category: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Genre: Ancient Roman Turducken, Anti-Civilian Violence, Future Emperors Being Sick on People, M/M, Rhetoric for Fun and Profit but Mostly Profit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Octavius is still a boy, the friends of Caesar begin to call at his sister's house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Esurire et Sitire Discet

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Esurire et Sitire Discet 他将学着辗转反侧](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388089) by [j_alfie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_alfie/pseuds/j_alfie)



When Octavius is still a boy, the friends of Caesar begin to call at his sister's house. Some come with news, and others with riddles; Cassius Longinus says not four words together in his entire visit, but only watches Octavius with eyes of flint. The slaves prepare meals fit for senators, mixing wine in leaden bowls to sweeten it and stuffing bird in bird in bird--for Octavius's grandmother would have no man think hers a poor table, nor her grandson the child of a poor man.

She is proud, in those days, her brow plucked high although her hair has grown soft and white; her cheeks are thin as the fabric of her stola. When she stands in the atrium with one hand on her hip, the light breeze stirring her emerald palla as she supervises her slaves, she is Vesta incarnate. When they think that she cannot hear, Caesar's friends remark that Julia Caesaris reminds them of her noble brother. "They're so eager to see his face in yours that they see it in everything," huffs Octavius's grandmother, but when her grey eyes trace his face, he knows that she is searching for the same marks of greatness.

The great men are coming to test him, says Octavius's grandmother, but Octavius disagrees. He thinks that they have come to see whether he will test _them_ \--whether he is truly a boy fit to stand among men.

He has quiet dactylic verse on his lips for the poets, discourses on governance for the senators, praise for the soldiers returning from Gaul.

He learns the words that will please, and he speaks them, for he is still a boy and wishes very much to please.

*

When his grandmother passes on, he speaks at her funeral with his voice high and quavering as a reed flute. Her death is well-attended; he can make out familiar faces among her mourners, and he knows that they have come to hear him speak and not to say their farewells to Julia Caesaris. There is Marcus Junius Brutus with his brow lined and his eyes downcast--there is Cassius casting his head about like a hunting dog.

There is a man whom he does not know, garbed as a soldier, who watches him speak as though he is reading a complex missive. Octavius meets his eyes, and the man has the temerity to smile.

"You speak well," he says, once the ceremonies have ended and Octavius is making his way to his mother's house. He follows the boy over the evening-dim paving stones, and when they pass a lamplit house, his eyes glitter with a strange light.

"Only to honor her," answers Octavius. He can hear the tremor of his own voice, and at once he feels incredibly helpless; he is meant to be proving his worth to this man, to all men, and he cannot even keep his _voice_ from shaking.

"I studied persuasion in Athens; I believe I know a good speaker when I hear him," says the stranger--and at once Octavius knows him, or knows his reputation.

"You're Marcus Antonius," he says. "My uncle has written about you." _And all Rome speaks of Mark Antony's excesses, his immoderate passions for women and men, pleasure and war and learning._

"Has he? And what has great Caesar to say of a poor soldier?" asks Antony with a smile. One of his teeth has chipped at the corner, and Octavius thinks that it must be very sharp.

Antony will want wit, and yet Octavius is exhausted and trembling and has no wit to give him. "He's written nothing of a poor soldier; of Antony, he had only praise."

"He wishes me to superintend Italy," says Antony. "A mark of his great faith in Rome's prodigal, do you think?"

"Or he means to govern you by showing his trust," says Octavius; he draws his woolen toga around himself, and tries not to think of whether it is obscene that a boy should wear a man's clothes to mourn the woman who raised him. He quickens his steps, soles drumming harsh on stone.

When he outpaces the soldier, Antony lets him pull ahead. "You're a wiser boy than I'd heard," he calls after Octavius, and Octavius tells himself that he will not turn back to look.

"Why am I wise?" he asks. He feels himself perilously close to crying, and for the world he would not have Antony see him in tears.

"Because you know something of how men use each other."

As he departs, he hears Antony's laughter resounding from the walls as swords strike sparks from stone.

*

Antony holds feasts in seized villas, surfeiting his friends with wine from his enemies' fields; there are lamps enough in the courtyards to turn night brighter than day, and if Octavius were to take a cup there, he would never find it empty.

He is wise enough to drink nothing, and he eats only little--an olive, a grape, a discarded crust of bread. Octavius knows well that he is being watched, and he would rather watch in his turn.

Across the peristylium from where Octavius lies, lean Cassius rests his back against a mural made to resemble a long gallery, his hands closed at his elbows as he surveys the open space. He can scarcely restrain a sneer at the debauchery that he sees, the senators curled cozily on couches with women below their rank, the slim wine-servers swaying like snakes from guest to guest with their tunics open on one side like those of Greek girls. If his eyes fix on Octavius, the young man recumbent upon a couch with a new toga virilis swathing his slender body, it is only to pass the same judgment on him that he passes on all other men.

He has been favored, and yet the favor does not please him; this will ever be the way of Cassius Longinus.

In the passage to the atrium stands Fulvia, her babe in her arms. She is newly married to Antony, or newly enough that their passion is still remarked upon--and so, too, do impolitic men remark upon the great love of Antony for her late husband. The matron's face is impassive as she watches her husband charming his handsome servitor; she has, thinks Octavius, seen her husband more licentiously engaged.

He finds that he despises her perfect calm more than her husband's excess.

Antony's hand traces down the wine-server's bare flank, disappearing beneath the cloth of his tunic; his hand will be warm, as will the skin it touches, and both glisten faintly in the lamplight.

*

"You'd travel to Hispania, would you," says Antony, standing over Octavius's couch with an impossibly self-satisfied smirk splitting his face.

"May you be damned for ever," mutters Octavius. He throws his arm over his eyes and tries to pretend that he does not feel like emptying his stomach over Antony's feet. "I didn't choose to be ill."

"An ill man's of little use, particularly to Caesar--I thought you knew all about use, little priest," answers the soldier. When he sits at Octavius's feet, it is all that he can do not to kick the man to the floor. The way his voice twists when he speaks of Octavius's election--as though it is not an honor but a _demerit_ to have been chosen for the College of Pontiffs--

"You think no man is of any use unless he's bringing you a drink," snarls Octavius. "Do you like my plain speaking? Then have some plain speech: get out, before I harry you out with dogs."

"None of that," laughs Antony softly. "I haven't come to condemn you, but to help you."

"I've seen hundreds of men butchered in the streets for your help," says Octavius. "You can't govern yourself, let alone Italy; I can think of no man whose advice I trust _less_. What help could you possibly give me?"

"Your uncle loves me, despite all I've done," the soldier replies, "And there isn't a man in Rome better placed to profit from his love than you are."

Slowly, Octavius uncovers his eyes; he feels a lancing pain as the sunlight pierces them anew, and he swallows bile. "You're shrewd," he says.

"I'm old enough to be shrewd," Antony answers simply, and he takes Octavius's hand. When Octavius meets his eyes, he realizes that this is so--that the laughing soldier who had followed him through the streets of Rome is six years gone. There are deep-worn grooves at either side of Antony's lips, and his dark hair is touched with grey.

Octavius thinks that he has spent all of his own life being shrewd.

"I'll listen," he says at last, "But I won't promise to heed you."

They sit together by the garden in the peristylium, watching the sunlight stir the leaves from the cool shade of the peristyle. Their conversation is light, economical; they speak frankly of what Caesar loves in Antony, and of what he must see in Octavius before he might bestow his love on his nephew, as well. They offer one another sharp questions and long answers as though they are taking their ease in a Greek academy.

In those hours, it is easy to see why the great failure Antony is nonetheless well-loved.

When a slave brings them wine, Octavius drinks--and when the wine come up again, Antony holds a basin for him and strokes his back.

*

On the night before Octavius departs for Hispania, he calls Antony to his bed. It is in part a gesture of gratitude, of repayment for services rendered, and it is in part a test.

He wishes to know what it is to give in to a single temptation; indeed, he wishes to know whether he _can_.

Later, with his hands fisted in the fabric of the mattress and Antony's body hard and hot against his back, Octavius has something like an answer.

*

On the day that Octavius arrives at his uncle's house, Lepidus is waiting for him there. "Antony will be stirring the plebs to mutiny," he remarks; "He's always been good at that," Octavian answers. The two men adjourn to the atrium, where slaves--Lepidus's or Calpurnia's--have laid out a repast for them. Octavius only sips at his drink, watching Lepidus eat. It strikes him as particularly vulgar, that unreserved rapture of veal and eggs; the sight makes him forget his own hunger after his journey.

Eventually, Lepidus looks up from his meal and swipes the back of his hand over his mouth (vulgar, but at least it means that he will speak at last). "You'll inherit your uncle's name and properties," he says, at which Octavius nods. "His money will go to the citizens, and the gardens and the properties on one side of the Tiber--"

"He's acquainted me with his intentions for his property," says Octavius. He puts his wine aside; it is too sweet, too rich, like wine for cooking rather than for drinking. "What of the conspiracy? I've heard the name 'Cinna' bawled in the streets, with 'Brutus' and 'Cassius' close on its heels--"

"They've taken to their heels," comes a gruff voice from the vestibule; when Octavius looks up, he sees Antony standing there, rubbing at his temples slowly with dark shadows beneath his eyes. "At least I can still raise a respectable rabble, when the time calls for it. Citizens, will you join me at my house? It's possible that Caesar's will be overrun."

"Of course," agrees Lepidus at once. He calls for Calpurnia while his slave begins to pack the remains of their meal; Octavius watches them speaking, the widow and the soldier, and he wonders what they say. He passes his nearly-full cup to Antony, who downs the sweet wine and grimaces.

Lepidus is coarse enough to laugh at some low remark, and Calpurnia is graceful enough to smile.

"He's a fool," mutters Octavius.

"He's useful," Antony answers. "When we need to call for deaths, he'll be our mouthpiece."

"You'll play him like a reed flute," Octavius says, but Antony only shakes his head.

"No," he answers, as they step into the vestibule and then into the sunlight. "No, Octavian, the time for my poetry is finished."


End file.
